Mind, Volume 31

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Oxford University Press, 1922 - Electronic journals
A journal of philosophy covering epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of logic, and philosophy of mind.

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Page 342 - As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Page 70 - ... no difference in its cognitive function. Certain extrinsic phenomena, special experiences of conjunction, are what impart to the image, be it what it may, its knowing office. For instance, if you ask me what hall I mean by my image, and I can tell you nothing; or if I fail to point or lead you towards the Harvard Delta; or if, being led by you, I am uncertain whether the Hall I see be what I had in mind or not; you would rightly deny that I had 'meant' that particular hall at all, even though...
Page 70 - Suppose me to be sitting here in my library at Cambridge, at ten minutes' walk from "Memorial Hall," and to be thinking truly of the latter object. My mind may have before it only the name, or it may have a clear image, or it may have a very dim image of the hall, but such intrinsic differences in the image make no difference in its cognitive function.
Page 211 - Thus there can be little doubt, that the further science advances, the more extensively and consistently will all the phenomena of Nature be represented by materialistic formulae and symbols.
Page 8 - But to form the idea of an object, and to form an idea simply is the same thing; the reference of the idea to an object being an extraneous denomination, of which in itself it bears no mark or character.
Page 260 - There is a larger meaning of the word proof, in which this question is as amenable to it as any other of the disputed questions of philosophy. The subject is within the cognizance of the rational faculty; and neither does that faculty deal with it solely in the way of intuition. Considerations may be presented capable of determining the intellect either to give or withhold its assent to the doctrine; and this is equivalent to proof.
Page 169 - I am no philosopher, but a poor ignoramus trusting what he hears from the men of science. I rely on them to discover gradually exactly which elements in their description of nature may be literally true, and which merely symbolical : even if they were all symbolical, they would be true enough for me. My naturalism is not at all afraid of the latest theories of space, time, or matter : what I understand of them, I like, and am ready to believe, for I am a follower of Plato in his doctrine that only...
Page 285 - Produce an after-image of the sun and look at your finger-tip ; it will be smaller than your nail. Project it on the table, and it will be as big as a strawberry ; on the wall, as large as a plate ; on yonder mountain, bigger than a house. And yet it is an unchanged retinal impression."* An actual object producing a retinal excitation of the same extent would vary in size according to its distance.
Page 324 - ... to habituate myself to the exercise of a sort of technical memory ; and by repeating in my own mind, the parts of which objects were composed, I could by degrees combine and put them down •with my pencil. Thus, with all the drawbacks which resulted from the circumstances I have mentioned, I had one material advantage over my competitors, viz., the early habit I thus acquired of retaining in my mind's eye, without coldly copying it on the spot, whatever I intended to imitate.
Page 162 - Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

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